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(Envy of the Gods) (Russia) Directed by Vladimir Menshov (Oscar winner for best foreign film for Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears, '80).
Cast: Vera Alentova, Anatoli Lobotsky, Aleksandr Feklistov and Gérard Depardieu.
Plot: (from St. Petersburg Times) Set in 1983, "Envy of the Gods" centers around a love affair between Sonya, an unassuming news editor at Ostankino, and Andre, a French journalist. With considerable affection and humor, Menshov captures the details of his heroine's familiar, stable Soviet world. Her trials are the everyday ones of relationships with friends and family, while the political atmosphere of the Andropov era comes across only in the daily ritual of trying to catch jammed foreign radio broadcasts. It's only on the emotional front that Sonya, played by Vera Alentova (Menshov's wife), feels her world is incomplete. Though she's happy living with her husband - a moderately successful, officially acknowledged writer - in an elite flat in the Taganka Stalin skyscraper, his ideas for improving their conjugal relation are as limited as her expectations of it. All that changes when Andre (Anatoly Lobotsky) accompanies a visiting French writer - played in an energetic though somewhat limited cameo by Gérard Depardieu - to what's supposed to be an informal meal at their flat and a passionate affair ensues. Though it avoids a happy ending, "Envy of the Gods" has plenty of the fairy-tale feel that Menshov believes will appeal to a popular audience - particularly its older female members - which, judging by reception at the first screenings, seemed very ready to believe in the romance, and none too put out by its erotic content.
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